For what it’s worth, I think DKSA tried to drag superheroes kicking and screaming into the 21st century, whereas most superhero writers are alternately still pretending it’s either the 1960s or the 1980s.
I loved The Dark Knight Returns, but hated everything else Frank Miller did with Batman.
I was going to say something about how the Dr. B what-if-bad-future story beats out both Dark Knight Returns and Spider-Man: Reign (which is great BTW), but Dr. B wouldn’t let that happen.
I have a friend who maintains that The Dark Knight Returns would be a great movie with Harrison Ford as Batman and Mark Hamill as Joker
anywho, can anybody explain that yellow batman pic? Was that something he did, to make Hal Jordan useless?
The yellow-painted room strikes me as fairly obvious satire. ASBAR is full of barking crazy idiocy, but at least some of it is intentionally outlandish.
Batman has an elaborate plan for everything, and the most powerful of the superheroes tend to have the most ridiculous weaknesses. Miller is poking fun at those two things.
And yeah, Batman was counteracting GL’s powers by trapping him in an all-yellow room and dunking himself in yellow paint.
I didn’t hate DKSA at all, and really just for that reason. It’s crazy because ever since DKR came out in the 80’s, everyone’s been trying to get back there - normal Batman went from Neal Adam’s blue to super gritty right away in an attempt to bring DKR into normal continuity. Which was the whole point of why it had to be an Elseworlds story, when Batman had turned all old man grumpy - normal Batman wasn’t really like that. Every other Batman story since has been about how he’s getting darker and darker, and at the end he needs the various costumed kids around him to restore his perspective of things.
Ever since DKR, the entire property has been moving backwards, always back to the super gritty 1980’s when it came out.
And then DKSA shows up, it’s direct sequel…and it goes the opposite direction.
The actual quality of the book can be debated, but I thought the ambition behind it was at least fresh, if not successful.
What’s really neat as well (and I completely forgot this until now) is that Frank Miller actually said All-Star Batman & Robin was supposed to be an earlier story set in the same Dark Knight universe.
If even either in continuity or if just in spirit, I thought that was pretty wacky to note. Certainly explains some things regarding the tone of the book and the characters, at least.
What it means? I have no idea.
The impression I get from ASBAR is that it’s trying to say something, but it has no idea what.
DKR wasn’t just an outrageous take on the DCU. It was direct and precise. Some of it wasn’t terribly subtle, but superheroes tend not to be.
Yeah, as soon as I saw Wonder Woman’s weird face armor, and her and Superman’s random makeout, I pretty much knew it was going to be in the same timeline as DKR and DKSA.
I thought DKSA sort of failed in similar ways to Mark Waid’s The Kingdom. DKR and Kingdom Come were sort of stories that could only be told once before it branched off into some really weird. Naturally, both respective sequels were disappointments. Carrying this analogy further, both stories were somewhat defined among their readers by the art. If The Kingdom could have “downgraded” art from its predecessor, DKSA could’ve used more appealing pencils.
I’m looking forward to A-S Superman. I’m a little disappointed that McDuffie is writing it instead of Morrison himself. What I’m worried about is that Morrison and Quitely went out of their way to put subtle touches here and there and if McDuffie’s animated projects tell me anything, he doesn’t do subtle Superman. Crisis on 2 Earths was an example of one boring Superman, and that was a McDuffie.
they both look dope. I’m glad that DC has tightened their shot group(for awhile now).
Year One does look pretty good. As long as they don’t rush it, it could make a decent transition to the screen.
And Bryan Cranston is awesome.
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I don’t like this Batman voice…
Voice acting in this clip is weak all around.
And while the rest of it is pretty spot-on in its attention to detail, does it look a little too pretty to everyone else? The colors are so bright and the line weights are all razor thin. It doesn’t look much like Year One aside from the character designs.
The voice does catch you off guard, but its prolly cause Im so used to kevin conroys voice. If there is one thing the nolan movies taught me its not to judge a bat by its voice, and besides that everything else looks cool in the short clip. I like the art style especially. While I like what DC is doing, I hope they take some chances with some other characters soon, I mean we got batman, justice league, superman and then more batman, and we are prolly gonna get a superman movie when the man of steel is coming out as well.
Hopefully some of the other characters get some love, for example id like to see a constantine movie but Im realistic and know that has a very low chance of happening, so maybe a sequel to that wonder woman movie or a Teen titans movie based on the judas contract(I heard they were planning on making that). Props to them for the spotlights though, since those kinda give them lesser known people some shine.
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Last preview clip that I’m gonna post here.
Watching now, this movie starts slow, but there’s a lot to keep your interest. Goddamn, pre-Catwoman, hooker-era Selina can fuckin’ throw down!
This was better than Batman Begins, fwiw.
I never knew Gordon had such a deep past. I likes!
as much as i dislike dc comics, there animation is top tier. The only good stuff left imo.